Almost three years into the Syrian uprising, the internet is flooded with content produced by Syrians, from the tireless footage of daily violence to civil resistance initiatives. After decades of citizen production being controlled and subordinated to the Syrian regime, the preservation of the large amounts of content associated to the Syrian uprising and the civil movement is increasingly important to understand the Syrian context. Such is the focus of an initiative called The Creative Memory of the Syrian Revolution, that aims “to compile all the creative expressions that Syrians have produced in their struggle against tyranny, and which they have been consistently killed for.”

“The world has watched our suffering in real-life time,” one of the co-founders of the Creative Memory said in an interview with Syria Untold. “This is our message to the world, a world that would rather look the other way: Ours is a revolution, like any other revolution in history. Our people, like so many others before us, are fighting for the right to life and dignity, and this struggle is impregnated with amazing manifestations of creativity.”

To this end, the project focuses on compiling and documenting all creative manifestations produced by Syrians since March 2011, from photos and videos to banners and graffiti. “We would like to become a sort of public library, or museum, as some of our readers call us.”

The group has two main focuses: “The first is to write our own history, so that there is a record of who we are and what we are fighting for. If one of us is killed, someone else will replace him / her and our collective memory will continue to be preserved.” The second is to face the world, “which refuses to listen and would rather ignore the reality that Syrians are facing as long as there is a war on terror discourse that justifies it.”

To fight such indifference, the Creative Memory project appeals to universal conscience through art and creativity manifestations. The voice of the people in the face of the regime´s discourses, the Syrian streets in the face of regime forces, collective historic memory in the face of official propaganda.